SOBOBA: Casino sends slot machine to space to celebrate 20 years

The "flight team" from Soboba Casino poses during filming of a promotional video as officials prepared to launch a slot machine into space to note the casino's 20th anniversary.

COURTESY OF SOBOBA CASINO

OUT OF THIS WORLD

• Soboba Casino will celebrate its intergalactic slot machine at an "Out of This World" party at the casino at 8 p.m., June 27 and an all-day event June 28

• The June 27 event will will feature the debut of the online trailer "Soboba's Mission to Space," a film about the project by Inman Productions of Riverside

• Also at the party, 10 winners will receive a commemorative cards that were launched with the machine. The cards will feature a hologram seal with a certificate of authenticity verifying the voyage to space

Space will no longer be the final frontier for intergalactic gamblers.

To celebrate its 20th anniversary, Soboba Casino will have a slot machine launched into the cosmos Sunday, June 14.

But if aliens hope to hit a jackpot, they better be quick. The machine will launch near Lovelock, Nev., at 4 a.m., reach its destination about two hours later and be back to Earth by noon. And if there really are extraterrestrials hoping to strike it rich, they better be small, as the slot machine is not full size -- although it is operational.

The slot machine will not be inside a space ship, but will enter the atmosphere on a craft designed and launched by JP Aerospace, a nonprofit, independent space program and research organization.

The craft will rise to peak altitude of 100,000 feet – about 19 miles – via weather balloon, then come back to Earth via parachute. It won’t reach outer space, which begins 70 miles up, but the machine will boldly go where no slot has gone before.

Michael Broderick, director of marketing for Soboba Casino, said the idea to shoot the first slot machine into space came when executives were looking for ideas to note the anniversary and he remembered seeing video clips of other items being sent into space.

“It was really about celebrating a monumental occasion with a monumental event,” he said.

The casino on the Soboba Band of Luiseño Indian Reservation near San Jacinto opened in June 1995. Broderick said no one’s sure of the exact day the venue opened, so the anniversary is being celebrated for the entire month.

John Powell, founder of JP Aerospace, said the slot machine is “kind of right in the middle” of the unusual items his organization has sent into space over the past three decades.

The oddest, he said, were a rubber chicken and a single chair, which Toshiba used in a television commercial.

In its 38th year, JP Aerospace does about four launches annually, often taking up items provided by schoolchildren.

“We get student experiments from all over the world,” Powell said.

The Rancho Cordova-based group also sends up advertisements and promotional items – such as the slot machine – which pays the bills for research, Powell said.

Standing less than 12-inches tall and weighing in at 2.5 pounds, the slot machine is a miniaturized version of a three-reel, one-armed bandit that could be found in the casino. It is operated with coins, reels, gears and springs, but does not have the electronics or computer elements found in a modern slot.

Once the craft is recovered – which could take could take anywhere from two hours to two days depending where it lands near the remote northwestern Nevada launch site – the slot machine will be put on display at the Soboba Casino. Also aboard will be commemorative cards that will be given to customers and VIPs.